“OMG, it sounds like you have super brittle bones. What’s up with that? Is it because of your diabetes?”

I sighed into the phone, grateful that the telehealth professional couldn’t see my annoyed facial expression.

“Oh no, it’s nothing like that. I’m just clumsy!” I tried to keep my tone light and threw in a little laugh for good measure. She went on to say something about how I might want to consider taking calcium and/or vitamin D supplements, but while she went off on her tangent, my mind wandered.

What does bone health have to do with diabetes? And why does it seem like everyone assumes that all of my health issues are directly related to my diabetes?

Truthfully, it’s a safe assumption – the vast majority of the time, anyways – that my diabetes does have some sort of influence over the rest of my health. Plenty of studies indicate that comorbidity is common with type 1 diabetes (in other words, other conditions are diagnosed alongside the primary condition, in this case, diabetes).

But is my diabetes the cause for my seasonal asthma? Is it the reason I’m allergic to cats and dogs? Did my diabetes create the digestive issues I’ve faced since childhood? I don’t know, maybe. There could be a tenuous connection there.

On the flip-side, is my diabetes responsible for my (almost always) excellent blood pressure? Does it have anything to do with my slight arrhythmia? It’s not as clear-cut in those areas; in fact, I’d be hard-pressed to find a real cause-and-effect relationship when it comes to those things.

So do I blame my diabetes for “brittle bones”? Heck no. I blame my breaks in the last couple of years purely on myself and my tendency to rush around in an uncoordinated manner. And on top of that, based on how quickly I healed from my last break, I expect my recovery to go as well this time around, and I doubt that’d be the case if I genuinely had brittle bones.

This time around, it’s not my diabetes’ fault, that much is clear. And it’s also pretty obvious that I need to exercise a little more patience with health professionals who 1) don’t know me well and 2) are just trying to help me improve my overall health.

It’s a gentle reminder to be a touch more graceful in how I move…and how I respond to innocent queries about my diabetes and other health conditions.